2. Deeper distribution channels. Lenovo and Motorola together can now sell smartphones, tablets and wearables in more countries and in more retail stores, operator stores, online stores, or PC channels;

3. Bigger marketing / R&D budgets. Lenovo and Motorola together can potentially spend or borrow more to fund extra marketing and R&D activities.

2. Motorola is losing money. Motorola continues to make hefty financial losses, due to a relatively large cost-base. Based on Strategy Analytics data, Motorola has NOT made a profit for 4 years;

3. Smartphone mergers usually take several years to integrate. For example, TCL-Alcatel, a Chinese and French merger, took around 5 years to stabilize and sustain growth.

Clearly, Lenovo and Motorola have strong tailwinds -- such as 8% global smartphone marketshare and two well-known brands. But Lenovo and Motorola also face major headwinds. Lenovo's golden era of easy smartphone growth is coming to an end, while Motorola continues to lose money. Merging these two firms next year will NOT be as easy as many expect.

According to the latest report from our WSS (Smartphones) research service, global smartphone shipments grew 27 percent annually to reach a record 320 million units in the third quarter of 2014. Xiaomi was the star performer, capturing a record 6 percent marketshare and becoming the world’s third largest smartphone vendor for the first time ever.

Global smartphone shipments grew 27 percent annually from 252.9 million units in Q3 2013 to a record 320.4 million in Q3 2014. Smartphone growth was mixed on a regional basis during the quarter, with healthy demand in Asia and Africa counterbalanced by sluggish volumes across North America and Europe due to ongoing changes in the operator subsidy mix.

Samsung shipped 79.2 million smartphones worldwide and captured 25 percent marketshare in Q3 2014, dipping from 35 percent a year earlier. Samsung continues to face tough competition from Apple at the higher-end of the smartphone market, from Xiaomi and Huawei in the middle-tiers, and from Lenovo and others at the entry-level. Samsung is aiming to fight back in the next quarter with fresh models such as the Galaxy Note Edge and Note 4. Apple grew a below-average 16 percent annually and shipped 39.3 million iPhones worldwide for 12 percent marketshare in Q3 2014. Apple’s iPhone growth is slowing worldwide because of its limited presence in the fast-growing entry-level segment. Xiaomi was the star performer in the quarter, capturing a record 6 percent marketshare and rising into third place in the global smartphone rankings for the first time ever. Xiaomi’s Android smartphone models are wildly popular in the Chinese market and it shifts millions of them every quarter through its extensive online and operator channels. Xiaomi’s next step is to target the international market in Asia and Europe, where it may face stronger headwinds of low brand awareness and technology-patent challenges next year.

LG shipped a record 16.8 million smartphones worldwide in Q3 2014, rising to fourth position and taking 5 percent global share. LG is performing relatively well in the United States and Europe, due to attractive new models such as the G3 and L series. Huawei rounded out the top five players with 5 percent global smartphone share in the quarter. Huawei’s core strengths lie in emerging markets, such as Africa, China and Latin America, where it operates extensive distribution channels.

According to a new report from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies (WSS) service, Blackberry captured 1% smartphone share worldwide in Q3 2014. The company’s hardware division is finally on the cusp of returning to profits for the first time in three years. Cost cuts (e.g. outsourcing) and improved BB10 designs -- like the Z3 and Passport models -- are driving the vendor’s enhanced performance. Additional analysis can be viewed by clients here.

Microsoft’s strategy to grow the Windows ecosystem for mobile devices has begun to pay dividends, with the company reporting that it has signed 50 new hardware partners since spring this year.Beginning in April 2014 Microsoft announced that it would make its Windows OS platform available free to hardware vendors for devices smaller than nine (9) inches, a strategy it has adopted in order to rapidly grow the size of the operating system’s ecosystem.Strategy Analytics’ WSS (Smartphones) service shows that sales of smartphones using the Windows Phone OS grew by 90% year-on-year in 2013, but that growth stalled in Q2 2014.Microsoft’s new strategy, which is intended to encourage the development of devices costing less than $200, will help to drive smartphone sales of the platform going forward, though the biggest movement is not likely to be seen before 2015.

The report Global Smartphone OS Market Share by Region: Q2 2014 provides a complete view of the current standing of all of the mobile operating systems and is valuable for mobile stakeholders who want to size the huge market for smartphones and OS market share.

The French mobile phone market dipped 5% YoY in Q2 2014, in keeping with the longer-term trend of slightly sluggish growth in the country. Among vendors, Samsung and Apple retained the top two spots, but both brands lost share. Local vendor, Wiko, continued to make impressive gains -- although, there are signs it may be slowing. This published report, available to clients, tracks handset vendor marketshare at the four major French operators -- Orange, SFR, Bouygues Telecom and Free Mobile -- from Q1 2009 to Q2 2014. The report is an important tool for measuring the health of individual handset brands at the operator level.

According to the latest research from our WSS (Smarpthones) service, global smartphone shipments reached 295 million units in the second quarter of 2014. The Android operating system captured a new record of 85 percent global marketshare, mainly at the expense of BlackBerry, Apple iOS and Microsoft Windows Phone.

Global smartphone shipments grew 27 percent annually from 233.0 million units in Q2 2013 to 295.2 million in Q2 2014. We estimate worldwide smartphone growth has halved during the past year, from 49 percent a year ago to 27 percent today. Global smartphone growth in the current quarter is at its lowest level for five years, and there are wide variations by region. For example, Africa and Asia are booming, while North America and Europe are maturing.

Android’s domination of global smartphone shipments reached a new peak in Q2 2014, with an impressive 85 percent of all smartphones now running Google’s OS. Android’s gain came at the expense of every major rival platform. BlackBerry saw its global smartphone share tumble from 2 percent to 1 percent in the past year due to a weak line-up of BB10 devices. Apple iOS lost one point of share to Android because of its limited presence at the lower end of the smartphone market. Microsoft Windows Phone continued to struggle in the United States and China, and its global smartphone marketshare fell from 4 percent in Q2 2013 to just 3 percent during Q2 2014.

Like the PC market, Android is on the verge of turning smartphone platforms into a one-horse race. Its low-cost services and user-friendly software remain wildly attractive to hardware makers, operators and consumers worldwide. Rival OS vendors are going to have to do something revolutionary to overturn Android’s huge lead in smartphone shipments. Apple’s push into the big-screen phablet market and Firefox’s expansion into the ultra-low-cost smartphone market later this year are the only major threats to Android’s continued growth at this stage.

According to the recently published report from Wireless Smartphone Strategies (WSS) service, global smartphone user base is expected to get close to 2.5 billion by the close of 2015. By region term, Asia Pacific is estimated to account for a lion's share, mainly boosted by a growing number of smartphone users in emerging markets including China, India, Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam in addition to two established smartphone countries, South Korea and Japan. Smartphone user base for 88 countries in 6 continents are covered in this report.

The report is also forecasting the global smartphone user population penetration to figure out the ratio of smartphone ownership out of population and the global smartphone user household penetration to understand the propotion of active users per every single household for 88 countries through 2020.

According to our WSS (Smartphones) research service, BlackBerry smartphone shipments fell sharply worldwide during Q2 2014. The Canadian vendor continued to struggle in all regions worldwide. However, cost-cutting and inventory destocking helped BlackBerry to trim its financial losses to the lowest level for over a year. A partnership with Amazon Appstore also improved its services portfolio and there are tentative signs that BlackBerry may finally stabilize in the second half of this year.